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No one gets Personal Training Testimonials like this one.

No one ELSE anyway.


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3 PBs in 3 days!

Well, I've had a pretty good week so far!

Here's a video from today, setting a new personal best on One Arm Dumbbell Rows. 65kg, for 4 (and a half!) reps. You can see it's too heavy for me to control very much on the eccentric part of the exercise, but I'm was pretty damn pleased with this all the same.



Next up is a new 4 rep max on dumbbell press, 50kg each hand. Very happy with this!



Finally here is the big one... new deadlift PB from Monday. This is 165kg, close enough to double bodyweight. You can see it took me a couple of tries to get focussed enough, but I got there in the end!



Currently feeling VERY fired up about beating all of these in the weeks ahead!

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The "Strategic Gluttony" Diet.


Have you heard about this one? You probably haven't yet because I only just dreamed it up last night, but it's my very own gimmick diet program!

A little ironic considering I've called out, exposed, debunked and ridiculed pretty much every gimmick diet going around on my Lose Weight No Bullshit website already, right?

Here's the deal though. It's like I said in my post about marketing the other day... if you eat the right amount and train hard, you get results. All diets work by reducing calories below what is required to maintain weight... some do it in a drastic and unhealthy manner with extremely low calories, and others do it with a more sensible level of intake. The thing with the gimmick diets is that they try to act like there is something else going on... like they've put it together in some special way that means extra results. Well... if you aint eating the correct amount, none of that makes a difference. And if you are eating the right amount, you're going to get results anyway... at best maybe this gimmick diet is giving you a tiny little extra edge to what you would have been getting anyway.

So like I said the other day... outside of simply "hitting your macros" the value of any diet plan should be in terms of "this will make it easy and convenient, and you're sure to succeed", not whatever bro-science type claims they want to make.

As for my Strategic Gluttony idea though, it started as a bit of a laugh talking about pizza. Now, pretty much anyone I know who is successfully getting great results from training, without too much worrying or stress is doing this already anyway... and the other people who are NOT doing it should START doing it. Simply put, the happy and successful people are in the habit of eating about the right amount that their body needs to maintain their goal weight, fuel, adapt and recover from training, and get them through the day. Either they do this through intuition, or they've done the maths (or perhaps asked me to do it for them) and built a plan to meet their requirements that way. But all the same, they have no hesitation, second thoughts, guilt or regret about saying "to hell with it" once in a while and feasting on pizza, or ice cream, or whatever takes their fancy.

So we were talking about pizza and I made a little joke like "I think it is good for your mental health to enjoy gluttony just as much as training". And the more I thought about it... it seemed like a great idea. Fuck feeling guilty about eating for enjoyment... the very meaning of life is to enjoy things and food is no exception!

There's a strategic element too though. Making allowances for a weekly "cheat meal" is a great way to take the pressure and stress out of adhering to the plan. Although it stops being a "cheat" when you have planned for it, right? Also we all know that there is a favourable (leptin) response that occurs when consuming a larger amount of calories after restricting.

Aside from enjoyment and indulgence while still getting results, this is most importantly about mental health too. People need to eat in order to survive, they need to enjoy themselves and indulge once in a while too in order to be happy. There is absolutely no room for feelings of guilt to be associated with eating... but we do need a strategy to make this work in line with our fitness and body composition goals.

I put the idea out on tumblr and the response was so enthusiastic that I went ahead and started a new website, where I'll be writing it all up properly, soon. Check it out: Strategic Gluttony.

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You guys get that the free program is a screening process for potential clients, right?

It's interesting because I've had advice from some people telling me I shouldn't give so much away for free, and to be honest that's how I felt for a long time as well - if people want something they have to pay for it, it's valuable information and I have bills of my own that I need to pay. On the other hand I've had people tell me they've recommended my free program to people, who've told them "if it was any good it wouldn't be free" and gone off and wasted their money on some other crap like fkn Ashy Bines or something.

First up though let's talk about training in real life. Training with me is not cheap. I mean, for what you get I actually think it is incredibly good value... but it's a substantial investment. That's a screening process too because I'm charging for sessions with me, instructions via email for training on days without me, nutritional guidelines and me checking that you've been logging your meals... all that stuff. And you pay for the lot, by the month... so... this is exclusively for people who are serious about getting results, right? People who don't want to train often enough to get results, don't want to fix their nutrition, don't want to commit to the program... they're filtered out right away.

NOW Online PT is similar. You gotta be serious, you gotta listen to my advice, and do what it takes to get results. And it doesn't really require anything extravagant, difficult or unreasonable. Just eat the right amount, and hit the gym for an hour most days.

There's not much that's more rewarding to me than giving someone some advice or a program and having them come back a few weeks later reporting amazing results. Unfortunately though... a lot of people will need your advice, want your advice, ASK for your advice... but they're not really to TAKE or ACT on your advice. And that shit gets FRUSTRATING.

The program actually has a lot built in to try to combat this, to make people realise that there is no reason why they should not be successful, and to spell out in a very simple and straight forward manner how to ensure success. Do the maths to estimate your calorific requirements, and hit the gym with a full body resistance program, plus interval training once or twice a week. SIMPLE.

So the situation was... concerned with how many people were picking up & following bad advice from other sources, and as for being asked for advice myself... generally speaking, people from tumblr take it, act on it and get results, people from facebook take it, don't act on it, come back for more advice a month or two later, don't act on that either. In either case my advice is always the same, so why not just write it all up in one place and if it available to anyone who needs it?

So NOW, I get more messages along the lines of "hey I've been following your free program and I love it, it all makes such good sense and it's working out perfectly... where do I sign up for the Coaching Via Email program?" and when I get asked for advice from new people I can just tell them "everything you need to know is in the free program, study up on that". If they're ready for it... they'll go study up, start getting results on their own, and come back ready for the Online Personal Training program.
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I fkn hate marketing, man

I mean... I love training, being a trainer, coaching people via internet technologies, blogging, writing articles, inspiring, motivating and encouraging people. I love scam busting too. I even like coming up with different business systems and packages and pricing options and stuff like that.

Marketing though? I'm shit at it and I hate it.

My marketing such as it is is based on writing up a heap of quality free information, helping some people get results / overcome their problems, and eventually word gets out that you're the man to listen to if you want to know what's what. And the people you've helped appreciate you and want to support you.

It's a bit like my favourite bands. Sure, it's easy to illegally download the music... but screw that. I love these guys, I want to buy the extra expensive limited edition double CD, the tshirt, the dvd, concert tickets, you name it if it says "iron maiden" on it I'll probably go buy it.

So... that's why I'm not shy about putting out free programs like on my Lose Weight No Bullshit site. People love the results, appreciate it, tell their friends and ASK to sign up for the paid services. So that's what I do and it has taken a while but now there is momentum gathering like a snowball effect and word is out.

What you're supposed to do though? Like common practice marketing techniques? I just can't.

Advertising on facebook for example... you know those "sponsored posts" on your newsfeed? How annoying are those? Usually all the comments posted are complaints... so... it's one of those "annoy 10 people to attract 1 person" type strategies, I guess. Actually come to think of it... when I first got started I had a guy in a marketing advice / consultant type role who wanted me to put those annoying "give me your email address" pop up boxes all over my website. You know, you search for some info... click through to my page, read the first line and then BOOM there's a big popup over the top you need to deal with before you can read the article. Annoying as fuck, right? But I was told "if they're annoyed that's good, it means you have gotten their attention".

Fuck that shit though man. I just seems bass ackwards to me. Give 'em the info. If they want to sign up they will, surely?

That's like legit marketing though without even going into into the other side that the scammers use. The stolen progress photos, spam bots and so on. Also the "just take this pill and eat whatever you want" scumbags.

The other stuff I learned (but won't do) from marketing courses is this sort of "whatever people want, tell them that's what you do" type approach. My issue with this is that... every 6 months there's a new fad, right? Especially relating to nutrition there's a new fad every 6 months and at the moment it's "clean eating". Jump on facebook and look at some PT groups and everyone is pushing their own clean eating plan. The next one already starting to come in is "intermittent fasting"... now... trainers shouldn't be chasing around trying to keep up with trends and fads.

Every single trainer should be saying the same thing "eat the right amount, train hard, you'll see results". On top of that there's plenty of room to have your own approach and your own style of training. There's room for different approaches to nutrition planning as well, but it should be in terms of "you'll find this approach convenient and easy", rather than "these foods are bad" or perpetuating any other urban myths.

Still, as I've posted about recently... I believe that we are entering a period where more and more people are fed up with all the fads and scams, and are looking for real answers and real results through legitimate programs.

Anyway enough about marketing. What you should take from all this is that if you're looking for a legit program that's sure to deliver results with a Personal Trainer In Brunswick give me a shout.

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